


A World That Was Meant for Our Eyes to See

by annecoulmanross



Series: Old Friend, Come Back Home [1]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Reunions, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-23 09:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23009395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annecoulmanross/pseuds/annecoulmanross
Summary: How I do miss you, how I do miss you….the words hung in the air, whispering like arctic wind around Sir James Clark Ross, who lay curled around himself in bed, gathering the energy to open his eyes. He was so tired, so very tired.Sir James Clark Ross has lived through enough dreams and nightmares to know that it can be hard to trust the evidence of your eyes, but when one particularly convincing illusion finds him out in the fog, Ross is almost ready to believe.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Sir James Clark Ross
Series: Old Friend, Come Back Home [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1653634
Comments: 21
Kudos: 36
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2019)





	A World That Was Meant for Our Eyes to See

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ararelitus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ararelitus/gifts).



> For James, whose beautiful playlist [“To The Ends of the Earth”](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3lDhAbCPmaNgIl9sW1Dfte?si=lxBcU9XJSRW4X3qPePTJrw) was an excellent source of inspiration, and a wonderful writing soundtrack for this insanity.
> 
> I realized that I’d never seen a post-canon canon-compliant (aka afterlife) rossier fic à la some of the beautiful afterlife-fitzier fics I’ve read. So, I tried my hand at a short rossier thing.
> 
> For the @theterrorbingo square “out in the fog."

_How I do miss you, how I do miss you…._ the words hung in the air, whispering like arctic wind around Sir James Clark Ross, who lay curled around himself in bed, gathering the energy to open his eyes. 

He was so tired, so very tired. 

And these last years had been exquisitely painful. 

_How I do miss you, believe me; believe me, believe me yours…._

It was time to face another endless day: without Ann, without Francis. Ross steeled himself, thinking of the tasks to be done for the Admiralty, the letters he didn’t have the will to write. 

With a great effort Ross opened his eyes, expecting to see the yellow-patterned walls of his bedchamber at Aston Abbotts, but the sight that greeted him was a solid sheet of grey. He realized that he was surrounded by a devouring fog, a thick soup that blanketed the landscape around him in all directions. In place of his bed with its crisp white sheets, he lay in a pile of furs on the smooth flat surface of the pack-ice. 

Ross scrambled up and turned about, looking around for some landmark, and his eyes quickly found a dark shape towering over him. Looming out into the fog was the hull of a very familiar ship. Ross lifted up his hand and felt the icy boards of _Erebus_ beneath his fingers. 

_I cannot bear going on board_ Erebus, _how I do miss you…._

Ross sighed. However real it felt, it was just another dream, he knew now. 

Many nights he had been visited by these visions; they had become only more frequent since his dear Ann had passed away five years ago. 

Each night he would awake in the fog, lit only by the dim shadows of the arctic sun’s departed flame, like a piece of sail-cloth pulled over Ross’s eyes. He would peer frantically through the mysterious gloom, searching, always searching and never finding. 

Well. Almost never. 

On the worst nights, Ross would be stumbling over the frozen flood of the ice-field, and he would slip, and the ice would crack, and he would drop into the dark oblivion of the sea. Deep in the icy depths, he would see nothing but darkness, and yet he would feel cold, dead flesh beneath his fingers and shudder at the touch. 

Or even worse than that, Ross would lose his footing and crash onto the unforgiving ice, only to find himself lying amongst the “relics,” the scraps that Rae and McClintock had brought to him, offering up those clothes and bones and fragments like triumphant crusaders displaying the remains of some poor saint ripped from a peaceful grave in the holy land. And Ross would not be able to move for fear of crushing some precious object, in terror of breaking some fragile bone that had once belonged, perhaps, to a man he had loved. 

Those were the bad nights. 

One night, Ross had slipped on the ice and fallen and dropped right into his own parlor room at Aston Abbotts. Ross had been certain that he had awoken for real then, but all at once he heard a voice calling to him, as if from the next room over. 

_…. I would like to have seen your place…._ said that familiar voice, and Ross had leapt to his feet, frantic. He rushed toward the sound, but it floated ever further and further away, through the corridors of the house, still speaking in that lovely, sardonic, Irish burr _….that I might often picture to myself your little employments…._

Ross had wandered through room after room, chasing that dear sound as the voice of Francis spoke to him, growing more and more distant: _….one thing is certain, meet when we may it will be to me a source of heart felt pleasure.…_

Eventually, the echo faded into the quiet air, and Ross had found himself sitting beside the water behind the house, looking out through the thin mist toward where he knew the two little islands lay. His very own unmoving _Terror_ and _Erebus_ – surely their shores were now ringed with ice, just like the rime of hoarfrost around the bank where he now sat. He had shivered, but could not feel the cold, only imagine it, only imagine how cold it must have been, like his days with Parry, or with his Uncle John – but, for Francis, unending, fatal, freezing the breath out of his lungs. 

After that dream, when Ross had awoken to the real dawning day, he had gone down to the water and held his hands under the surface until they were blue, and Ann had scolded him mightily when she awoke, pressing his cold fingers to her neck to warm them. 

But now even his dear Ann was gone, and Ross was truly alone, amidst this growing gloom. 

The sky above, though still gray, darkened as though with oncoming night, and Ross huddled closer to _Erebus_ ’s hull. He turned his face in toward her planking, and breathed in, pretending he could smell the familiar blend of salt and pitch and paint and caulking. The fog might continue to curl around his back, but Ross took no notice, until – 

“How I have missed you, James.” 

Ross couldn’t bring himself to turn around. That familiar voice sounded so close, so real, but had it not always? This was just another dream. He would turn around and Francis would be nowhere to be found. Francis would disappear into the air like so much smoke. 

“James dear, will you not come to me?” 

Ross trembled and would not turn. He pressed his hand more firmly to the curved wall of Erebus, imagining that the wood grain was novel to his touch, and not just a well-known and well-loved sensation conjured up by a grieving mind out of many years’ memories.

“James?” 

Ross heard firm footsteps behind him, but he would not turn – not if it meant the voice would cease, vanishing into the fog around him. 

And then – 

– Ross startled, feeling a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

Francis was still speaking, so _close_ , “James dear, please tell me you are alright–” and Ross was in chaos, trying to explain how he might be able to feel Francis’s hand. Surely such a thing could not be possible. 

Ross kept his eyes firmly shut, but he reached a shaking hand up to his own shoulder. There he found familiar fingers, and slotted his own in between them, marveling in the warmth and weight. Ross tried to speak, “I–” 

Francis’s thumb moved comfortingly against his neck, and Ross could find no more words. 

“I am here, James, truly.” 

Ross could resist it no more. He gripped the hand on his shoulder tightly – so that this specter could not slip from his grasp – and, finally, he turned. 

It was like seeing the glowing pole for the first time: bright, overwhelming, the tenderness in Francis Crozier’s face as pure as the heaven’s own light. He looked just has Ross had remembered him from their earliest days together – that bright hair still golden, not yet dulled to grey, and his mouth set in a wide smile that showed the charming gap between his front teeth. Even his dress uniform was gilded and bright and twenty years out of fashion. 

“You–” Ross swallowed. “Francis, it _is_ you.” 

Francis tightened his lips and arched a brow, as Ross knew him to do when he was hiding a laugh. 

“Yes, James dear.” 

Ross gripped the hand that he held more fervently. “How–” his voice was rough, labored. He began again, “How are you here?” Ross managed to get out in a flood of wonder. “Where have you been? Why do I dream you _now_?” 

Francis tilted his head. “You are not dreaming anymore – that is why.” 

“But then what _am_ I doing, Francis?”

The look in Francis’s eyes held such tenderness as he spoke, “You are speaking with me again, at last, my friend. We are past dreams, now.” 

“Past dreams? Francis, you never used to talk in riddles!” 

“Oh James,” Francis said. “You’ve passed over at last. You’ve passed – on.” 

Ross gaped. Surely he hadn’t been cruel enough in life to earn a place in some hellish purgatory of fog? But he now realized that the thick mist was clearing, its weak eddies swirling only around his legs, as the vast concave arch of the sky glittered above with stars. The beauty of the Arctic, his best friend standing before him once again – what more would Ross wish from heaven? 

Perhaps Ross had in fact passed on; he had recently felt tired enough that it could be true. And it did explain Francis: found, after all those years. Had he been lost in the fog that whole time? Ross shuddered. 

“Then – Francis, tell me you haven’t been trapped here since–”

Francis shook his head. “I admit I have been here not long, but no, James. This place is bigger than it seems. We are not trapped at all, but free to wander between wonders, both _Erebus_ and _Terror_ , the comforts of home and the wide world. We are even given leave to see the ones we’ve lost, at our leisure. All we lack is those we’ve left behind, and they come back to us one by one. I’ve waited for you, my friend – though, I admit, not for as long as you might suppose.” 

“Then you are alright?” Ross asked. “You seem well.” 

Francis nodded. “I’ve had my time to heal and mend – as will you. Only those with the ice in their hearts awaken out here on the pack; many find themselves awakening at the house, in comfort. I hoped that for you.” 

“The house?” 

“Well, the one our merry band uses,” Francis said. “Back on the cliffside not far from here. You can come meet the others – they’ll come back to the ships later, but most are at home tonight.” 

“So, your men, they are all here?” Ross asked. 

Francis nodded. “Among others – their loved ones, as many as have arrived. I think you’ll find one or two loved ones waiting for you too.” A mystery twinkled in Francis’s eyes, but Ross allowed him this secret – for now. The grim reality, though apparently far from Francis’s mind, had captured Ross’s thoughts. What all those men had suffered, that they should be here, now. What _Francis_ had suffered. 

“I am sorry,” Ross said firmly. “Pleasant as you make this place sound, you should not have been made to endure what you did. The things the Esquimaux told me – God, Francis.” Ross fought back the urge to sob. 

Suddenly, Francis’s palm was warm against Ross’s cheek, soothing.

“I looked for you – oh _god_ Francis, I’m so sorry. I wish I had never let you go. I wish I had gone with you. I wish I’d gone _instead_.” 

“James.” Francis’s voice was all warmth. “I would not wish that for all the world. It is over now, and you are here, and there is nothing that cannot be mended.” He was so close now, cradling Ross’s face with one hand, while the other hand was grasped tightly in both of Ross’s own.

Ross could bear it not a second more. He broke his hold of Francis’s hand so that he might throw his arms around Francis’s shoulders. “God–” he gasped, having knocked the breath out of himself with his unexpected forcefulness. 

Francis laughed, truly this time, and passed a hand through Ross’s fiery hair, brushing the waves away from his face, and Ross shivered. Francis was looking at him so intently, Ross almost could not bear the weight of his gaze. It was like all sensation had come back to him after five years, after nearly twenty, and the sudden rush of feeling threatened to fire his blood into something more youthful. 

Almost without a thought, Ross leaned toward Francis and kissed him, deep and true. 

Francis hummed into the kiss, and Ross broke off with a gasp, shocked at himself. But Francis smiled on, and pressed his lips slowly to Ross’s red-stubbled jaw, and then his smooth cheek, and then the corner of his mouth. 

Ross felt his breath linger, sharp and high, quivering in the air between them. 

They were beyond the edge of departed fame, here. The floating clouds of fog had dispersed, and there was nothing left but Francis before him, the crisp cold air around them, and the splendors of Aurora’s fire that rolled, unceasing, above them. 

The second time, when Ross kissed Francis it was slower and more hesitant, but no less welcome by any measure. A soft blazing flame burned between them. Ross treasured every warm, velvet touch of Francis’s lips. 

Finally, Ross broke away just far enough to wrap his arms more firmly around Francis’s shoulders, and felt Francis’s answering embrace around his ribs, those strong arms gathering him in. He leaned into his dear friend, burying his head in the shallow curve of Francis’s neck, and at last, at long last, James Clark Ross wept.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from “Ends of the Earth” by Lord Huron, from the aforementioned lovely rossier playlist. The quotations in italics are from a letter Francis wrote to Ross on July 9th 1845. [You can read it here](https://canadianmysteries.ca/sites/franklin/archive/text/CrozierRoss_en.htm) if you like crying. Interspersed within the text are a number of phrases stolen indiscriminately from a poem Ross wrote when he was a young man on the Parry expedition, called “Lines Suggested by the Brilliant Aurora, January 15, 1820,” which was published in _The North Georgia Gazette and Winter Chronicle_ , no. 14, January 31, 1820. [You can read it here.](https://annecoulmanross.tumblr.com/post/611590869225799680/today-in-james-ross-appreciation-week-we-go-back) The historical timeline relevant to this story is that Lady Ann Ross died in 1857, and James Clark Ross died five years later, in 1862. In my version of this universe, Francis Crozier passed on sometime between the two, perhaps around 1860, at around the age of 64. (I’m sorry to kill him so young but he still lasted longer than Ross did, historically! Ross was only 62 – ouch, I hurt myself there.) Visually, I imagine that they’re somewhere around their 1839 selves here, perhaps; just a bit younger than in the show.


End file.
